[navymichael]

Just a thought, but I think we ought to round up a bunch of top auto makers and scientists and lock them in the desert for a few years and come up with a substitute for the internal combustion engine that will work to help us get off the oil.

We already spend a rediculous amount of money on it anyways, and even if we throw 10 billion dollars into the project, it's gotta be cheaper than what we're currently spending.

If oil and energy is such a national defense issue, so much so that we are willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in the middle east on arms etc. then I don't see why we don't take a few guys out to the desert, kick them in the butt and make it happen.

[BanditFlyer]

Stuff like that usually comes from the little guy. I'd like to see some hobbyist invent a 700 horsepower hayabusa that runs on something other than fossil fuels.

[Gabriel]

What we really need is a perpetual motion Tibetan prayer wheel

[Bastiat]

Originally Posted by BanditFlyer

Stuff like that usually comes from the little guy. I'd like to see some hobbyist invent a 700 horsepower hayabusa that runs on something other than fossil fuels.

I thought a Hayabusa had 700 horses?

[valis]

Originally Posted by Bastiat

I thought a Hayabusa had 700 horses?

but it runs on fossil fuels; I think bandit is looking for a flux capacitor powered hayabusa.....things are death traps anyhow, may as well put some plutonium in there somewhere.

[Bastiat]

Originally Posted by valis

but it runs on fossil fuels; I think bandit is looking for a flux capacitor powered hayabusa.....things are death traps anyhow, may as well put some plutonium in there somewhere.

There are no traps! Hit something or have something hit you and you just fly away (it's the landing part that creates all the problems).

[valis]

dang that gravity anyhow.....I would like to take one of those to a nice, open, STRAIGHT place, like, say bonneville, and let 'er rip. Other than that, I'll stick with 4 wheels, thanks.

[lotuseclat79]

There is an answer to your question navymichael.

Follow the money! Who has a huge stake in the status quo? Where is the political will? Follow the path being blazed in Iceland or Scandinavia for a Hydrogen economy (look on pbs.org using search for Hydrogen and/or Hydrogen economy).

Where is the incentive and motivation to move forward? Vision is needed to drive progress - and whomever gets there first will be the big winner, but at what cost to the rest of us?

A key concept is "sustainable" energy. What could be more abundant than sunlight (solar energy) or Hydrogen (separate the H molecules from salt water).

-- Tom

[Stoner]

Originally Posted by lotuseclat79

..................... What could be more abundant than sunlight (solar energy) or Hydrogen (separate the H molecules from salt water).

-- Tom

Quite possibly electricity from fusion generators......but it's been estimated as far off as 20 to 50 years with 50 being more realistic.
It was unfortunate the Reagan admin canceled the US project in the mid 80's.
Could have been that much ahead, time wise.

[Knotbored]

Huge breakthroughs nearly always are done by individuals, not groups or committees. Even the Manhattan program was a "building" program and not an intellectual task-the theory was already determined before LosAlamos or Hanford were begun.
If there is ever a replacement for the internal combustion engine it will likely be by some amateur that forgot to read the paragraph that said something was impossible.

[Paquadez]

Ummm, not quite right, actually.

The whole point aboput the Manhattan Project was that one man, Roosevelt, took a clear decision when he was faced with a "One of Three" option set, on the clear reality brought him by Lesley Grove: which way to achieve fissionable material? Gaseous Diffusion? An Atomic Pile? Or, A Cycletron?

Roosevelt's decision was to triple Resource: i.e. go with all three!

Effectively, he gave the project a blank cheque. As did Kennedy effectively with the NASA project.

Additionally, BTW, the research carried out up to the time that the project was founded was primary and basic; much remained to be done. The other thing the project achieved was to bring together some of the best available scientific brains in the then free World, including men like Nils Bohr, who was actually smuggled out of enemy territory (Denmark) by the British Secret Service; Robert Openheimer, Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi, David Bohn, James Franck, James Chadwick, Otto Frisch, Emilio Segre, Eugene Wigner, Felix Bloch, Leo Szilard, Klaus Fuchs and many others, like the British genius William Penney.

It is very far from clear, thus far, if a hydrogen powered car is the answer.

Probably the research answer is to multi-source the research - like the Manhattan project -
with possibly the Hydrogen-Oxygen approach; electric storage approach (i.e. a far superior "Battery"); and the Fuel Cell Approach.

That said, who is going to fund it? Since the final benefit will be for the whole World, the obvious answer is a multi-nation strategy. However this then means persauding each major industrial nation to give up their individual current research effort for the common global good!

With competitive globalised major corporations fighting it out to dominate major international markets, can anyone realistically see this happening?

I think not!

Thereafter, the vested interests of the oil majors and the producer states have to be realistically cancelled out!

Whose gonna do this? The UN?

One concluding comment: driving my best friends new Lexus SUV Dual Fuel, it is clear that after the Prius, Japan and Toyota are streets ahead in this area already!

And with the focus of automotive manufacturing (and research) now being the Far East, it's a good bet that the Quantum Leap forward will come from Asia: not the West, sadly.

[iltos]

why not?

it's our attitude 'bout things, imo

we put a man on the moon 'cause it was perceived as vital america's political circumstances at the time

we built an atomic bomb 'cause it was percieved as vital to america's political circumstances at the time

a new kind of engine?.....alternative sources of energy?
until it become vital to the political circumstances "at the time", it ain't gonna happen

even those who KNOW how important these things have become cannot present a vital political reason for their necessity.

http://www.physorg.com/news112287759.html

"Making the transition to a sustainable energy future is one of the central challenges humankind faces in this century," they said.

Their report, "Lighting the Way: Toward A Sustainable Energy Future," is published by the InterAcademy Council, whose 15 members include the national science academies of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Brazil, China and India.......

.......The substantial expansion of coal capacity that is now under way around the world may pose the single greatest challenge to future efforts aimed at stabilising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere," the report warned.......

......But they cautioned that the move to sustainable energy could only happen if nations work together to free up the necessary financial resources and expertise -- and setting a price for carbon to punish pollution and waste and reward clean energy was a key part of the mix.

hey....i get what they're saying, and support it wholeheartedly....but what the hell kinda political reason is that?

it's like telling a kid he needs to brush his teeth or he's gonna get cavities....it's a kid....he doesn't care about the future.....at least, any further away than tomorrow.

when the last tooth falls out of america, THEN we'll be interested
or maybe the pain will wake us up before that happens

[LANMaster]

I have long thought that a super low level, fully self contained fission reaction for automobile propulsion might be workable, but the politics would never allow it.

[valis]

well, 'fully self-contained' can only go so far. Have some dude suicide into oncoming traffic whilst doing 100 or so and anything that would not suffer some cracking under that is probably too heavy to put in a vehicle anyhow.

Then, what do you do with the cars that people abandon? Imagine the Plutonium Junkyard. Repo Man all over again.

[LANMaster]

Originally Posted by valis

well, 'fully self-contained' can only go so far. Have some dude suicide into oncoming traffic whilst doing 100 or so and anything that would not suffer some cracking under that is probably too heavy to put in a vehicle anyhow.

Then, what do you do with the cars that people abandon? Imagine the Plutonium Junkyard. Repo Man all over again.

I just imagine there must be some way to do it safely, and on a small enough scale that one would need 1000's of these systems to make anything really dangerous.

An aircraft carrier, while it has a huge reactor, as a percentage of the mass & weight ... wnen compared to an auto, the reactor could fit into the glove box.